


firebrand, meet waterproof

by candybank



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: (?), Avatar the Last Airbender AU, M/M, One Shot, in a world where the fire nation won the war, mention of war and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 18:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18155636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/candybank
Summary: “you think you know what it takes to run an empire.”“no. i only know how to row a boat.”(or: junmyeon is a disgraced fire prince held in captivity, and yixing is a boy from the southern water tribe.)





	firebrand, meet waterproof

**Author's Note:**

> [click here for visuals](https://twitter.com/xuslut/status/1107540923561308162)....im not gonna lie to u and say that this is good ahahahaaa this is completely self indulgent and more ofa character study than plot driven idk what im saying its a hot pile of bricks i just really love atla<33 if u notice any typos please ignore them ty..

the fire nation capital sits at the heart of a volcano, thousands of miles away from the south pole. still, hearing the rush of tap water racing from a faucet into a tiny bamboo cup makes yixing feel close to home.

luhan, one of the hundred other soldiers sitting inside the cramped room with him, waiting for reassignment, he had said hi when they first arrived. hi, i’m luhan, came from factory work at a fishing village up north, he had said. funny where life takes you huh, he’d elbowed yixing as if they were long-time friends, i was born in a fire nation fishing village, you know. i think they’re running out of business now, though, he’d said, what with the water tribe colonies being put to work in the seas and all. more fish swimming upstream these days, he’d laughed, if you know what i mean. and yixing had had no idea what he meant, but he’d smiled and laughed along. 

“want me to heat that up for you?” luhan smiles now, and yixing barely understands what he’s saying. yixing barely understands the way he talks, even after fourteen years of living in the fire nation, even fourteen years after the war was lost, he barely understands the way words roll off fire nation locals’ tongues. but he nods, and smiles, and luhan smiles back as if they aren’t monsters. he lights a small fire with the tips of his fingers and holds it under yixing’s cup until steam rises from the inside.

“i have extra jasmine leaves here, if you want,” luhan offers, and the room is starting to buzz a little too loudly; yixing has to listen well to hear him, so he leans forward so he can listen well, and he nods. luhan drops a handful of leaves into his cup and says wait for a minute.

so, yixing waits for a minute—or a second. he’s not quite sure he heard luhan right. and he’s still trying to sort through the words in his head when the door slams open and the room turns silent.

there is the rustle of putting things down, putting things away. then, there is the rush to stand, to salute, to stand straight again and to wait. 

“at ease,” the army officer in front drawls in the bored voice of army men forced to work office jobs. he motions with his hand for everyone to take a seat, so they do. “i’ll be calling out your name followed by your new location assignment,” he says, “you are to stay in your seat until i say you can go. i won’t be calling names twice so shut up and listen well.”

then, he begins going through the list, starting from the twenty a’s and the five b’s and the fifteen c’s and the four d’s. yixing, zhang yixing, he whiles the long time with luhan. 

“where’re you from?” luhan asks. 

“earth nation colony,” yixing lies.

“weird accent you got, huh,” luhan says, more fascinated than anything. 

and yixing, he doesn’t know how to keep something like small talk going. so, he smiles, and luhan’s name is called, and luhan pumps his fist quietly. he says yes, palace duty, i’ve always wanted to see the palace. i heard the prince is a little out of control, the boy beside luhan chimes in, and luhan waves his hand dismissively. whatever, he says, no one grows old in the army anyways, at least i get to see the palace—isn’t it a pretty grand way to die? you mean by the hands of a royal brat’s temper tantrum, the other boy laughs. luhan smacks his head, and yixing wonders if they know each other. 

“zhang yixing. capital city prison,” the army officer says, before he moves on to the last five names on the list.

“hey—capital prison! that’s not that far from the palace,” luhan beams, “maybe we can catch a meal on weekends or something.”

“sure,” yixing nods politely, not expecting much of anything. 

“count me in,” the boy beside luhan joins their conversation unprompted again. “i’m on guard duty at royal academy for boys. wrangling spoiled rich kids twenty-four-seven…” he sighs, as if he’s already been defeated. “i’m ‘gonna need several drinks. my name’s baekhyun, by the way.”

yixing bows his head, says nice to meet you, and when luhan and baekhyun stare at him, he wonders why. 

“and your name is…?” baekhyun prompts.

“oh—“ yixing replies, reminding himself to round his o’s and soften his i’s. “yixing.”

 

***

 

capital city, with its high walls and bright lights, and too many tourist carts and too many people yelling over each other, it’s indescribably different from the ice and snow and quiet that he grew up with. not that he’s been home in more than a decade, but still, his new apartment is small and hot and smells like old dumplings and moldy bread, and he misses eelshark soup in the air, stirring rice porridge in a pot over an open fire because his mother used to always make it special for whenever his father came home from hunting, or war.

then one day, they just couldn’t wait long enough for him to come home. the fire navy ships crashed into the shores of their village, and men in black and red pulled them out of their houses, and yixing still thinks about the rice left bubbling over the flame. how they’d left it, how it must taste awful now, overcooked, how they couldn’t eat it now even if they wanted to.

not that the canned moo-sow’s and pigchickens that the army had stocked the cupboards of his paid residence with are that much more edible in comparison.

he takes off his armor, leaves his shoes by the door and hangs the ties and laces neatly on the back of a chair. yixing unpacks his life and it stretches the expanse of a small dinner table. he opens the window, and slips into an old, scratchy brown shirt that he’d made from his father’s fishing nets. the bed is hard, the mattress thin and the metal frame old and creaky, but he takes a deep breath, inhales the scent of home, and it’s not all that difficult to fall asleep.

 

***

 

the first week on the job is usually the roughest. learning the ropes, meeting new people, memorizing new rules. he knows this, because yixing has been working in the fire nation army as a lowest-level soldier for ten years, and he has been reassigned to a hundred different places a hundred times over.

soldiers at the lowest-level of the fire nation army are what ranked officials call _waterboys_ —both a slur against people of the water tribe and a worse way to say errand runners. they fill any positions that need filling, any position that doesn’t require longer than two weeks of training, and they’re reassigned to anywhere around the world to do anything at all at the whim of someone too high up in the hierarchy for them to ever meet. and coming from the water tribe, barely lucky enough to become a citizen of the fire nation, yixing knows he can never rise up a single rank no matter how hard he tries. 

two-hundred days out of a year—which means to say the whole year because the fire nation had re-established the calendar, among other things—yixing feels like an open wound rubbed with salt twice over, but he does his job quietly, so that he can honor his parents’ deaths the best that he can.

his parents, who had both been non-benders, the same as him, who were spared from death because of this, and instead forced into labor at a fire nation factory in the dessert of what used to be the earth kingdom, they died when he was sixteen, trying to get him a better life.

so, yixing bites his tongue. he takes the low pay, bad food, no stability and bare benefits, and reminds himself that it’s still miles better than working in a labor camp with most of the hunted refugees and citizens of former foreign nations. 

he catches sight of his reflection in a mirror as he walks down the hall to the training room, the black and red covering his body from head to toe, the black that makes his skin look paler, the red that makes his gray eyes grayer—he doesn’t recognize himself—and it’s not that difficult to remember that the fire nation won the war, and they own everything as far as the eye can see.

 

***

 

two weeks pass quickly for someone who doesn’t know how to do anything besides throw himself into work. yixing memorizes protocols and procedures and if there’s anything that the people of the fire nation love, it’s traditions and workplace initiations, and he passes that easily, too, as if he has absolutely nothing else to do, because he doesn’t, and he’s praised for it. the guards running capital prison are mostly lazy, but if anything else, they reward hard work excessively.

“you get the prince,” his supervising guard hands him an envelope with a handful of parchment inside—everything he needs to know about kim junmyeon, the eldest son of the phoenix king, entering his tenth year in jail. 

“prince…?" 

“yeah, it’s a family secret,” the guard winks at him as she opens the door and leads the way out. she’s chatty—she says we’re going to see him now, you’ve probably never seen him before, his father had him removed from books and pictures, hey, you know, he really likes pretty things, i think he’ll like your eyes—not that he’ll want to take them or anything, she laughs.

and yixing, he doesn’t know what to make of the words he’s hearing, so he pretends not to understand them all that well.

“anyway,” the prison guard in front of him continues on, “his meal schedule and everything’s on there. he doesn’t get outside time and any approved visits go through me so, don’t worry about that. i’ll tell you.” 

they go up stairs, down a few halls, each of them getting narrower and narrower and brighter and darker and brighter again. then darker, darker. soon, metal bars are replaced by solid brick walls, torches with glowing blue stalagmites, and as if she has read his mind, the guard says to him, “yeah, he’s kind of in isolation. his brother, prince sehun, he came down here _himself_ to close up this part of the prison after the last time prince junmyeon tried to escape. they even got an earthbender to do it.

oh, and of course, no fire near him. he’s a firebender—a _really_ good one. like i said, almost successful escape attempt.

you know, prince sehun is way taller in person than he is in portraits. and wayyy more handsome,” she divulges, like a teenage girl with a crush.

and yixing, he’s too busy watching the walls to really listen. 

they arrive at the only prison cell for miles. the inmates of capital city prison, mostly mass killers and enemies of the state and corrupt high-ranking political figures, they’re locked in cages within unlocked cells.

his supervisor opens the gate into the cell and guides yixing in.

“morning, your highness,” she greets the figure in gray sitting atop a pile of sheets on the floor. yixing guesses that that’s his bed. he looks around, and notices that there is nothing else in the cell besides a thin mattress, a thinner blanket, a worn pillow and a book in one corner of the room.

“i thought he didn’t get any recreation time…” yixing comments. 

the guard beside him smiles, “i gave that to him,” she says, turning her voice to the prisoner when she talks again, “but i’ll have to get it tomorrow, okay? warden’s doing a sweep on saturday.” 

when yixing shoots her a look like a question, she turns back to him and shrugs. 

“we don’t know what he’s in for,” she says, “i don’t think he killed anyone, so—the man upstairs is kind of… _unpredictable_ ,” and yixing thinks that she says the word like she means to say awful, or mean, or something worse about the fire lord that she doesn’t want the ears on the walls to hear. “we’re guessing it’s family drama so, we’re not horrible to him.”

yixing nods in understanding, though it’s not quite clear to him why some criminals are persecuted and others are barely punished.

“not ‘gonna say hi?” the guard points her voice back to the man inside, and he answers her with unmoving silence. “ _introduce yourself_ ,” she whispers to yixing.

and so, yixing schools himself into the disposable soldier that he is. “call me yixing,” he says to the faceless entity sitting in the dark, “i’m your new guard.”

a bout of silence passes, and the thought to leave has crossed their minds when a voice emerges from the blue.

“ _yixing_ ,” the voice is almost soft, almost kind, so dangerously gentle that yixing feels the eerie need to look behind his back. junmyeon says his name like he’s letting it roll around his tongue, like he’s trying to figure out what’s in his mouth.

the conversation follows the rhythm of a broken metronome, pauses too long and introductions too quick. yixing thinks to say something, he wonders if this is where he’s supposed to say something, but junmyeon speaks again, “and your accent…”

he sounds curious, hooked on something. there follows another long pause, his head moving in such a way that yixing catches a glance of the side of his face. he didn’t believe it when the guard beside him said it, he didn’t think a piece of history could be removed from history so easily, but it occurs to him now that whoever this is isn’t anyone that he’s seen in textbooks or paintings.

“water tribe,” the prince says, as if he’s taking a chance, asking a question that he’s almost sure he knows the answer to, and yixing doesn’t swallow the bile in his throat. he lets the bitterness sit on the back of his tongue, so as not to show fear, because although junmyeon can’t see him, yixing can’t shake the feeling that he has eyes on the back of his head.

but he doesn’t need to wait and see, because in the next moment, junmyeon stands and turns around, walking closer to the bars of his cage, and yixing has to curl his toes so he won’t flinch.

there are no windows in junmyeon’s cell, but his pale face and yellow eyes catch in the faint glow of the stalagmites from outside, and yixing sees him clearly.

“ _southern_ water tribe,” he grins, as if he’s gotten it right. his glowing yellow eyes, like the eyes of a dragon, they drag from yixing’s head, from the tip of his headpiece decorated with the fire nation emblem, to the tips of his pointy black-and-gold standard-issue guard boots. junmyeon grins, and yixing furrows his eyebrows in reply.

there follows a long pause, like the pause after a question, when you’re supposed to answer a question, but no one really knows what’s being asked, so junmyeon smiles.

“your coworkers must like you,” he comments, but yixing still says nothing back. “i’m a good prison boy, don’t worry.” 

from the corner of his eye, yixing sees his supervisor roll her eyes.

“alright, that’s enough fun for the day,” she says, “dinner’ll be down in a bit. finish that book tonight, alright?”

junmyeon nods once, gracefully, as if he’s in no hurry, as if he has never been in a rush. and yixing’s supervisor, she walks them out of the cell and back down where they came from.

“he’s one of the easiest and nicest ones here,” she tells yixing, “besides the escape attempt, we haven’t had any trouble. he knows a lot about a lot of things—being a royal really is a privilege, i guess. best schools and everything. but anyway, some days, he’ll chat your ear off, honestly. better than dealing with the horrible shit some of these prisoners try to do daily, though.

we think he’s gone a little,” she makes a motion with her hand to her head, as if to say that the prince has gone crazy. then, she shrugs. “and i don’t think they’re going to get him out of here ever, honestly. just be nice to him and he’ll be nice to you. same with the rest of the prisoners—well, most.” 

and yixing, he thinks this is just like learning how to tie a rope, or how to row a boat, or how to spear a fish. one step after another followed by another then another, and if he follows the steps, and keeps his eyes wide open, very little can go wrong.

he nods, saying everything back to himself, thinking of the time, thinking of what he has to do next.

 

***

 

junmyeon is easy to get along with. his tongue is silver, probably from sucking too hard on the spoon that was shoved into his mouth seconds after he was born. yixing spends most of the day talking to him about everything, or standing outside his cell, saying nothing.

some days, junmyeon will talk about the world, and tell yixing all of its secrets. and other days, junmyeon will stare at the brick wall as if he’s trying to burn a hole through it. the one thing that doesn’t change is how well he speaks, whether its with his tongue or with his hands. 

“you’re smart,” yixing says, standing upright by the door of the cell, then he takes a second look, “at least… you _sound_ smart.” 

this makes junmyeon laugh, “it’s called a silver tongue.”

“hm?” 

“it’s a saying. when someone speaks well, you’ll say they have a silver tongue.”

yixing thinks this is a strange thing to say, but he guesses that it’s no less strange than anything he has heard and seen.

“why silver?” yixing can’t help tilting his head, pupils blown with curiosity.

“you say silver because silver is strong, and if you mold it right, for example, in the shape of a sword, it can be sharp, and used as a weapon. 

in the same way, words are powerful, and when you use your words correctly, they can be sharp and you can use them as a weapon—to defend yourself with, or to attack other people with.

you use your tongue to speak, and so your tongue is like silver molded into a sword.”

junmyeon says this, and yixing can’t quite bring himself to believe it, because he has used words to beg for his life before, and he has used words to plead for mercy, and nothing good has ever come out of using words instead of swords. he thinks, if words can be used like swords, then the fire nation never would have won the war. 

he shakes his head in disagreement. for the first time in the few months they’ve spent together, junmyeon sees yixing smile—really, it’s more of a grin, a scoff, but he takes what he can get and turns it into something that he likes.

“i think using words as weapons… is a sport only the rich can play,” yixing says plainly, honestly.

and junmyeon has heard this before, or he has thought of this before. ten years alone with nothing but his thoughts is a lot of time to think of a lot of things. still, yixing says it, and he smiles. 

“and why is that?” he asks, with the same intent as a rich man purchasing novelty.

and yixing thinks to melting ice, burning wood, being in the dark and hungry and thirsty, being like a flower trying to reach for the sun, vines twisting, leaves falling away, “because you have nothing to lose.”

and junmyeon, books and scrolls and closed rooms, pen and ink and firebrand, he thinks yixing is a little clever, and he wonders if yixing thinks that he’s being clever. junmyeon he, presses closer against the metal bars, “you think you know what it takes to run an empire.” 

yixing doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. he curls his toes inside his boots and thinks of the steps—tying a rope, rowing a boat, spearing a fish. “no,” he answers, “i only know how to row a boat.”

 

***

 

there’s a festival or some other, for a dead dragon, for the rise of something—the people of the fire nation are celebrating something, there are lanterns and lights and cellophanes and flags strung up all over the city, fireworks in the sky, but yixing doesn’t think anyone knows what the late night is for.

he asks luhan and baekhyun, because he’d run out of reasons to avoid going out with them, but they give him an answer just like everyone else’s—a nod, a laugh, just enjoy it, don’t ask, just dance. 

he asks over mugs of beer that cost over a week’s worth of work, his voice washed out by the yelling and the music and a marching band passing by.

“the parade tomorrow,” luhan says, breath already smelling like bad decisions, his smile is almost loopy, eyes dreamy, “the prince is passing by. prince _sehun_ ,” he clarifies—enunciates.

“you working the float?” baekhyun asks. 

luhan shakes his head no. “just standing by the gate where he passes. but i hear the curtains of the palanquin are see-through so,” he grins, as if he’s proud of himself, “i might see him.”

baekhyun bursts into laughter, downing the last few drops in his mug, hesitating to order another. 

“isn’t school out that day?” luhan pokes baekhyun’s ribs with his elbow, “what’ll you be doing?” 

“nah. the kids are ‘gonna go watch, so we ‘gotta watch them. i’m betting _two_ silver coins that someone’s ‘gonna get lost.” baekhyun laughs his misery away, touching the slight dip in yixing’s red cheek.

“what about you?” baekhyun asks him, eyes fixated on his dimple. “how’s guard duty?”

yixing thinks to say it’s fine, i’m learning everything about the fire nation, about politics, about religion. i’m watching the phoenix king’s eldest son, did you know that fire lord minseok isn’t the phoenix king’s eldest son, did you know he sent his eldest son to prison? so, i’m watching him, and i spent every waking moment with him, i bring him food, and i laugh at his jokes sometimes, and he’s been teaching me how to speak.

“it’s okay,” yixing says, pausing. “nothing exciting. it’s… a lot of brick walls.”

baekhyun laughs like he’s said something funny, and luhan says hey, hey, your accent’s better, wow, that’s great.

 

***

 

a year passes, and nothing changes. the gates of capital city prison are shut tighter than ever. there’s talk of a new warden, because the current warden is being promoted up the ranks, because he’s been wanting to leave this shithole for ten years, and the new warden might replace the guards. 

“i hear he doesn’t like waterboys,” says one of the guards, belatedly catching his tongue and looking towards yixing in apology. “oh, shit, sorry—i didn’t mean it like that. i just, you know,” 

“it’s okay,” yixing says with a small smile, though he’s not sure that he means it.

a glance at the clock tells him it’s time to go, and he could spare a few minutes, but he’s not sure that he wants that. he wonders, briefly, if it says anything about him—that he wants to spend more time sitting in the dark with a convicted felon than in a well-lit, well-ventilated room with people that are supposed to be his friends. 

he takes junmyeon’s tray of food and says goodbye, says he’ll be back, says junmyeon might be up to something. he doesn’t hear the confusion he leaves behind, and he walks up the same dark halls that he’s been traveling everyday for a year—replaying the steps back in his head. how to tie a knot, how to row a boat, how to spear a fish. 

“i heard there’s going to be a new warden,” junmyeon says, sitting on the floor, posture ever impeccable, as he chews on a piece of bread with poise that a starved man shouldn’t be able to muster.

when he speaks, he keeps the dull gold of his eyes on yixing, watching what he does, following the movement of his irises.

“and the sun festival is going on,” junmyeon continues, yixing still wary, still cautious. “my little brother’s parading today, i’m guessing.” 

standing in his place beside the cell’s door, yixing nods slightly.

“ah,” junmyeon nods, “yesterday was your day off. you went to the festival.”

and he does this, he does, he speaks like he knows everything, like he sees everything and hears everything. words find his tongue, form themselves into sentences, then they leave him and materialize into fact. 

junmyeon has said that he doesn’t believe in happenstance, but yixing tells himself that this is just a coincidence.

“try the fried seaslug,” junmyeon says, sipping away at his bowl of day-old soup. he sighs, “would it kill sehun to visit once in a while.” 

he looks up to yixing, who only ever watches him, the world scattered all around them. “i’ll miss you if the new warden makes you leave,” he smiles, “i won’t forget you.”

**Author's Note:**

> kinda wanna do a hunhan chapter :!@#$#%$^% #hunhan2019


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